September 15, 2011

Last week several teachers shared ideas for introducing and practicing vocabulary. Here are some more:

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I know that this isn't the most creative idea, but one of the ways I like to reinforce my vocabulary is by creating puzzles for free on puzzlemaker.com (the actual url is http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/?CFID=13990941&CFTOKEN=71251434 ). The crossword puzzles are great because they are teacher-generated, so you can make them as complicated as you'd like (e.g., "accusative singular of 'city'"). Sometimes I will make a grammar warmup ("conjugate sum, esse in the Present and Imperfect Subjunctive" or "decline urbs, urbis, -ium") and give them a wordsearch for the lesson's closure--the students will need the right forms in order to solve the puzzle. I tend to end my week by giving them a puzzle like this for the last 5-10 minutes of class Friday--affectionately known as "Puzzle-Friday" by my kids.

I also like to make students create their own vocabulary drills. Sometimes for a warm-up I will have them create ten illustrations from their vocabulary lists, and I cut them up and rearrange their pictures to create the vocabulary warm-ups for the reviews for the rest of the week. (Low-tech but effective).

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